WHAT IS THE RIGHT TIME TO HIRE AN ATTORNEY FOR RELOCATION?
The sooner you can get in touch with an attorney, the better. Attorneys can guide people toward the things they should be considering. It would be beneficial because most attorneys should offer a brief consultation, whether over the phone or in person, and give you a quick kind of shake-down: “Tell me your situation.” Frankly, if I had someone give me 10 or 15 minutes of their time, and tell me the background of what happened before the move, and where they’re thinking about going, I can give them a pretty quick overview and analysis. With that, I will provide my opinion of whether it sounds like you have a pretty good chance of getting the court to ratify a move or not. However, sometimes I have people who wish to retain me even though they do not have valid reasons for moving. I tell those people, “Look, you can retain me if you want to, and I will try to get this done for you, but based on the factors you just told me, if I were to go present that to the judge today, you’d have a very tough time getting the judge to ratify your move.”
That is another real-world factor in the statute that addresses the “role and involvement of each parent in the child’s life.” For example, I have seen a situation where a parent has only parenting time every other weekend. In that scenario, the parenting schedule actually bodes well for the parent who wants to move, since they have the kids more often. Honestly, you can say, “I can live a state away, and we can still figure out a way to get this parent two weekends a month.” In fact, I know how you would argue that, and how you would probably convince a judge that that will be okay.
Contrast that scenario, where that other parent, instead of having just two weekends a month, has a shared residency schedule. Essentially, you are dealing with what I would call equal parenting time. If you have that factor, and someone were to contact me and tell me that, I would say, “You’ve got a really involved parent on the other side. I hope you understand that by your wanting to move, you’re essentially taking them from having that much time, to essentially putting them in a place where, probably at most, they’re going to be able to see the children two weekends a month.”
Understand then and appreciate that it is a pretty dynamic change for the kids. While the parents have to come forth with the reasons for and against the move, at the end of the day, it is all about the kids’ best interests. That will be the prevailing circumstance the courts look at. If you are in a situation where you have two parents with nearly equal parenting time, and then one parent wants to move a couple of states away, you are going to have a very tough, uphill battle to prove to the court why it should ratify the move. That is why you should get in touch with an attorney, because they can give you a quick analysis of your case and the circumstances involved. They can also then guide you to say, “Maybe you could start doing these things, to help maybe increase your chance, or see if you can get the other side to agree.” Then you can establish that as the status quo for a couple of months before giving them your notice to move. If you think the other side is going to move school districts, and you know you want to move across state or to a different state, I would say, “Hey, let the other parent move out of the school district, and then give them your notice to move.” Then, you have the right to move regardless of whether it is a block or a state away. The kids’ school involvement is one of the factors they will consider. In that scenario, you would increase your chances of being able to get the court to ratify the move by doing so at the appropriate time and waiting for the other side to move out first.
Most attorneys should offer a consultation, but not all do. Our law firm does. Someone could come in, and I would give them anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes of my time and kind of review those things with them. At that point, they would decide whether there was some way they wanted to move forward in a legal capacity. Do you want to retain me now to have me on call, or would you like to follow up? It may be that, after the 30-minute conversation, they realize they do not have much of a chance of successfully moving, so they might change their minds.